


With Music in His Ears

by SylphOfPaperPlanes



Category: Baby Driver (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Post-Canon, Prison
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-22 02:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11371158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylphOfPaperPlanes/pseuds/SylphOfPaperPlanes
Summary: When they take Baby in, the radio is on.The sun’s too bright, the roaring in his ears is too loud, and the hands on his shoulders are too rough as he’s shoved into the back of a squad car with a gun trained on him the whole way. Static is roaring from the center console.(Maybe it’s the shock, but he’s just a bit disappointed with the lack of cinematics.)---A fic exploring Baby's arrest, trial, and prison sentence, because everyone has to stop running at some point.





	With Music in His Ears

**Author's Note:**

> After watching Baby Driver the day it came out, I knew I wanted to write something exploring Baby's time both in prison and post-canon. So much was packed into those last few minutes, and honestly I've been itching to write a fic with a soundtrack for a while.

 

**_Mrs. Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel_ **

_"We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files_

_We’d like to help you learn to help yourself."_

 

* * *

 

When they take Baby in, the radio is on.

The sun’s too bright, the roaring in his ears is too loud, and the hands on his shoulders are too rough as he’s shoved into the back of a squad car with a gun trained on him the whole way. Static is roaring from the center console.

Maybe it’s the shock, but he’s just a bit disappointed with the lack of cinematics.

He knows a cop is reading him his rights, lips moving through a muffled slush of silence but everything is beyond too much right now, because they’re bringing Debora out of the truck.

He can just catch the gentle hand a female officer places on her back to guide her to a squad car, how they wrap her in a shock blanket, sit her down like she’s fragile and not the single most kickass girl they’ve ever met even while her hair falls into her face and are those tears drying on her cheek—

“You deaf, kid?” One of the officers asks, lips moving in the rear view mirror, not turning around from the driver’s seat.

“Nah, he spoke to the girl, ‘idn’t he?” The other looks up from where she’s flipping through stations on the radio, but it all sounds like the same, jittery mess under the ringing in his ears and the thick blanket of static this far from civilization.

If they say any more, he doesn’t catch it. They can talk all they want into the air in the cruiser—hot, stifling, too bright _for fuck’s sake he wishes he had his shades_ — but he can’t catch any of it, with how it sounds like they’re speaking into a wind tunnel or through the seconds after a bomb goes off.

Baby feels and hears the breath stutter in his chest like impacts. His head feels light-heavy and everything sounds too loud-quiet that he bites own hard on the inside of his lip to keep from screaming or sobbing or humming to drown it out.

Instead, he scans the scene outside, trying to find where Debora went. He can’t see her, but she’s smart; she’ll know what to say to who and won’t get herself dragged down with him. Even if she slips, they’d chalk it up to her heart being too big or his face looking too kind or something to that effect. He saw a documentary once on this type of thing. Stockholm Syndrome or something.

(But that’s not what it is.)

(Right?)

Baby turns back to the squad car as the engine starts, and is caught off guard by the officer in the passenger seat looking at him, as though she’s expecting him to answer a question.

“Real shame,” the woman says after a long moment when it’s obvious a response isn’t coming. “Always fun when the high profile guys are talkers. If you wanna chit-chat, feel free to speak up, kid.”

None of this feels right. Every heist movie on TV would have this type of thing happen at night, with a shootout and score behind it. Every Bonnie and Clyde looking couple would have their ending in flames under twinkling stars or some shit. Even in all those goddamn action movies where the hero wins and the villain and all his cronies lose (Baby doesn’t delude himself over what side he’s on), they all get carted away by the meanest looking police that the studio could afford, not two buddy cops who want small talk and act like he wasn’t a suspect in a bloodbath heist who allegedly took a hostage and had her drive him out to fuck-knows-where to cross the border—

Somewhere above his head, the sirens kick up on several cars as they head down the road, carefully swerving around the bullet-riddled truck he and Debora had pulled up in. Like clockwork, the radio static dissolves into Simon & Garfunkel, a song he knows well enough (track #10 in a playlist titled _Favorites_  on an iPod he found in a glove compartment four years back) that he’ll live with the roaring haze that frames it. Even with his hands cuffed behind his back, he leans into the vinyl of the seat, warm from the morning light, and the vibrations of the speakers seem to rumble through every inch of the car.

He only takes a moment to wonder if the damage Buddy did to his ears will be permanent, and he hopes to every cloud in the high heavens that it won’t be. Now that the adrenaline is finally wearing down and worry is settling into his bones the way it does after a big chase, he lets the reality of everything settle over his shoulders and fill the air. There’s no getting out of this one, no daring escape or intuitive maneuver that will let him go and live free for another day without getting him or Debora killed instantly.

A thought cuts through the buzz in his head and the acoustic guitar on the radio: he’ll never have to drive for a heist ever again. He rationalizes that, what, the best he’ll get is fifty without parole? The relief hits him slowly before it fills his veins, and he’ll work on that undercurrent of disappointment—the cut off from the rush—some other time, because he won’t ever have to cart around criminals and thugs and cash that he’ll never see again.

The trees pass the car with every note, and both officers are humming under their breaths, swaying their heads with the melody. It hits him again how wrong all of this feels; he shouldn’t be so at ease while he’s getting carted off to jail, but here he is.

He taps his foot to the beat, he slows his breathing, and, just for a sluggish and exhausted moment, he realizes that this is the first time he’s been in the backseat of a car since the accident.

**Author's Note:**

> [Link to this chapter's song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C1BCAgu2I8)  
>  I really appreciate any kudos or feedback you have to give, and you can also reach me at algebrasunshine on tumblr for fic requests and whatnot!


End file.
